First Quarter Update to 2015 Investment Outlook

Abstract

This is the first quarterly update to Segal Rogerscasey Canada’s 2015 Investment Outlook, which summarized the firm’s outlook for the world’s economies and investment markets. This update, “I’m a Fed Watcher, I’m a Fed Watcher…,” is based on an assessment of the global environment and data after the first quarter (Q1) of 2015.

As noted in the Q1 update’s introduction:

Over 25 percent of 2015 is gone, and it feels as though we don’t know any more than we did three months ago in terms of direction for the economic environment and for a host of important drivers of capital market returns. … The slow-growth world and uncertainty are making for a mostly boring period without discernable trends.

Segal Rogerscasey Canada’s advice in such an environment: Stay the course — and, in the meantime, join the legions of folks passing the time by watching the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed): “With the financial press interviewing and interpreting and parsing every word and phrase, we find that one can keep pretty busy waiting for the next set of minutes or carefully leaked sentence or Senate hearing.”

Following this update’s introduction are two sections that use a table format to present the firm’s revised views as of April 2015, with shaded cells indicating changes or additional information since the 2015 Investment Outlook’s publication in February: The updated Global Macroeconomic Outlook Signals section describes key macroeconomic factors driving markets in both the developed world (Canada, the U.S., the eurozone, Japan and the U.K.) and emerging economies (China, Brazil, Russia, India and others); the revised Asset Class Signals section comments on the direction of specific investments within the following three broad asset classes:

Equities U.S. equities, non-U.S. developed equities and emerging market equities